3. Autonomy
AUTONOMY is the third chapter of the comic We Want Everything based on the book of the same name by Nanni Ballerini. Beginning this chapter we briefly see the struggles and strikes all the previous days before that Thursday, 29 May (a day narrated in the previous chapter, THE STRUGGLE.)... More detail
Sebastian
This work is consisted of two paintings. The left one is based on the work St. Sebastian (1480) by Andrea Mantegna -while the other is based on the landscape of Gaza (in Palestine). In the first painting at the left the human figure of the saint is replaced with a mannequin. At the background... More detail
Altai -Colored
This is a series of colored illustrations for the book Altai by Wu Ming. These images were based on the sketches I had made several years before (and you can see them here, along with more details about the book). There are two versions of each image, the initial result of the coloring process... More detail
for a breath of freedom
The "for a breath of freedom" was initially written in the autumn of 2014, during hunger strike of N. Romanos and was completed about a year later (early October 2015). It is evident that the struggle of Romanos, alongside with the prisoners’ hunger strike in the spring of ‘15 played a key role in... More detail
The death of William George Allum
This comic was inspired by the poems of a greek poet Nikos Kavvadias, and especially the two poems called "William George Allum" and "Marabu". Unfortunately i haven't found any english translations of these two poems (you can find some other translations in this link). I will try and give a... More detail
Revolution Blues
This painting was designed at the same period with the Hunt and shares with it some same concepts and symbols... There is a huge reference to the works with mannequins of several mostly surrealist painters (and especially the ones of Nikos... More detail
Size
This is an animation where a young man is forced to work more and more by a gigantic figure until at one point he realizes there is something peculiar at the difference of their size. Festivals Size was chosen to be presented (amongst other digital works) at the Video Art Festival in... More detail
Rider's song
This comic is an interpretation of one of Federico Garcia Lorca's poems with the name Rider's song (or Horseman's song -Canción del jinete). The original poem is the following: Córdoba. Lejana y sola.Jaca negra, luna grande,aceitunas en mi alforja.Aunque sepa los caminos,yo nunca llegaré a... More detail
The Slave Ship
This work is a reproduction of the painting The Slave Ship, by J.W. Turner (1840) (you can read more about the original painting here). As I haven't seen this particular painting live, I relied on photos I found on the internet in order to complete this copy. Unfortunately there were many... More detail
Ano Syros
This is one of the landscapes I made using a pseudocubic technic. I was inspired by the view of the village Ano Syros in the island Syros of Cyclades (Greece), which is highly geometrical. Of course, this is no exact representation of the view. {gallery}paintings/landscapes/ano-syros{/gallery} More detail
The Hunt
Among the themes (or influences) behind this painting one could find chess, paintings with mannequins (like the works of G. De Chirico or N. Engonopoulos), the painting Garden of Earthly Delights (by Hieronymus Bosch), prisons, class struggle, demonstrations, graffiti and slogans on... More detail
Ellie and the monster
These are some illustrations i made for a child book (by George Gouzounis) that was published in Australia by the Greek Community. The outline of this short story goes like this: A young girl (Ellie) returns home one day from school and finds a small monster in her room. However she doesn't... More detail
Let us Describe
This short comic is based on the short poem Let us Describe by Gertrude Stein. This poem is one of the most descriptive ones (even though it ends with a more stein-ish manner). The poem's text is the following :   Let us describe how they went. It was a very windy night and the... More detail
Journey in the sky
This is a comic about young Leonardo da Vinci and his struggle to create a flying machine and fly. The story is based on an earlier short novel which was divided into two parts: one with an interior monologue (the thoughts of Leonardo) and one with a more “objective” narrative technique completing... More detail
Study Yellow Blue
A study playing with forms and four colors. This painting has a similar approach with the one called Study in Pink. Some dark outlines at the upper segment of the painting were not photographed correctly. I have included a picture in the gallery that shows the procedure i followed making this... More detail
Van Gogh Copies
Copies of paintings by Vincent van Gogh. The paintings are La méridienne, also known as La sieste, d'aprés Millet was painted from December 1889 - January 1890 (info http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/1389660699/), Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889) (info... More detail
Umberto Eco
A caricature of the Italian writer Umberto Eco. In the gallery below you can see a realistic portrait (of him at a younger age), fast drafts, more finished sketches and the final colored image.    The final image was published in high resolution in my patreon... More detail
Italo Calvino
A caricature of the writer Italo Calvino. In the gallery below you can see a realistic portrait, fast drafts (I had a hard time reaching a satisfying result), more finished sketches and the final colored image.   The final image was published in high resolution in my patreon... More detail
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front banner leonardo 1

"My Lord,

you ask for my sketches as a friend

but you will use them

as a King"

from my new comic "Leonardo: The dream and the Nightmare" (temporary title)

  • 1. The North

    "The North" is the first chapter of the comic "We want everything" based on the book of the same name by Nani Ballestrini. The comic does not follow the book literally: Here the first chapter does not correspond to the book's homonymous chapter, but it is a summary of the chapters "South" and... More detail
    1. The North
  • 2. The Struggle

    The Struggle is the second chapter of the comic We Want Everything based on the book of the same name by Nanni Ballerini (you can see the first chapter, the North, here). In this chapter we watch the first days of the hero in FIAT, his fierce relationship with the hierarchy (foremen,... More detail
    2. The Struggle
  • 3. Autonomy

    AUTONOMY is the third chapter of the comic We Want Everything based on the book of the same name by Nanni Ballerini. Beginning this chapter we briefly see the struggles and strikes all the previous days before that Thursday, 29 May (a day narrated in the previous chapter, THE STRUGGLE.)... More detail
    3. Autonomy
  • 4. The Assembly

    THE ASSEMBLY is the forth chapter of the comic We want everything based on the book by Nani Ballestrini. In this chapter, we see the assembly (assemblea) of FIAT workers and ​​university students at the weekend and briefly the events before the big demonstration on July 3, 1969 (which will... More detail
    4. The Assembly
  • 5. Rebellion

    REBELLION is the fifth and final chapter (without PROLOGUE and EPILOGUE) of the comic We want everything based on the book of the same name by Nani Ballerini. This chapter, as in the book, tracks the events in Turin on July 3 of '69, in what became known as the Battle of Corso Traiano (la... More detail
    5. Rebellion
  • Epilogue

    A 7th page epilogue of the comic We Want Everything, based on the book with the same name by N. Balestrini. This epilogue tries to summarize what succeeded the events in the comic and resulted in the movement of Autonomia. {gallery}comics/epilogos{/gallery} More detail
    Epilogue
  • Prologue: Albert's story

    This short story comes from Linhart Robert's book "L' ETABLI". Actually, it is the result of the combination of two separate stories of the book (relating to two separate individuals). As they describe in my opinion in a very vivid (but also brief) way the workers' lives both inside and outside... More detail
    Prologue: Albert's story

Displaying items by tag: appropriation

These are two appropriation paintings based on compositions by Piet Mondrian and three famous paintings from Francisco Goya: Saturn devouring his son (I have "used" this painting again in one of my political sketches), Colossus and the 3rd of May.

I was reluctant at first to make (and publish) these works due to the twisting of the ideas of Mondrian (I used green instead of the primary yellow and of course there are the faded paintings of Goya over the colors). To give an explanation for the green color I was inspired by the colors of the palestinian flag.

For the first painting (not so much for the second version) I was inspired by the resemblance of the black lines with a cage. I wanted to use three paintings -two with similar meaning (oppression, tyrany, giants against people, etc) and on the other hand, on the red color, a painting symbolizing resistance. I enjoyed the idea of a modern (art) cage for old traditional artworks and the implications of such a combination.

Published in Reproductions

Che

This is one of my favourite appropriation works. It combines many of the themes that interested me in painting (appropriation, (pseydo)cubistic landscape, mannequin figures).

The work behind it belongs to Caravaggio and is called The Entombment of Christ (1602–1603). After watching a photograph of Che Guevara a few moments after being murdered, I was amazed by the great resemblance of his face and the face of Christ in Caravaggio's painting. That was the starting point. The second inspiration was my journey in Cuba, the spring of 2008. Afterwards, my ideas cleared a lot about the general meaning I was hoping to achieve and it was inevitable to carry on with the painting.

Apart from the face of Che I changed the whole upper segment of the painting (the group of people holding him and their background). I gave military clothes to the two persons holding Che (one of them reminds Fidel) and behind them I used mannequins with a shift from a Picasso-like face to a oval face like the ones Dali used to create and then another transformation to more cubical forms to match with the geometrical dismantling background of Cuba on top. I added a spanish ship (like the one Colombus used when he discovered Cuba) approaching the island and the Monument of Revolution with the statue of Martin X ready to confront it.

Published in Reproductions

It's an appropriation work based on the painting Personage Throwing a Stone at a Bird by Juan Miro (1926). I haven't made so many changes: the yellow land is made gold, the eye of the figure is painted red, the figure is throwing a heart, the ball is changed into a bomb and the arrow-curvce into the symbol of euro. Above them there is a wooden sign hanging outside the painting. The sign is painted white and carries the word Feeling with fading black letters. It' s an erotic painting.

Published in Reproductions

These are two different paintings of Caravaggio, that I decided to combine. The first one is called Sich Bacchus (and many scholars believe that is a self prortrait of the artist). The second one is a detail of Mary Magdalene crying in the painting The death of the Virgin. My only change is that the boy at the left doesn't carry flowers but guns and explosives giving another meaning to the weeping of the young girl next to him.

Published in Reproductions

This was one of my first appropriation works (copies of known paintings with deliberate changes in order to produce a new meaning). 

The base for this painting was The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. I left the painting unfinished, with almost no color (there is only a dark and dirty grey background in place of the shining gold Klimt used). Especially the kissing couple remain mostly as a sketch, two disappearing figures on a colorless background.

I suppose this painting gives (or tries to give with its colorlessness, its uncertainty, its unfulfilness) the opposite kind of feelings than the Klimt work.

Published in Reproductions

These works were made a period I was studying art history and at the same time I was influenced by conceptual art. They were made firstly as copies, in order to improve myself on sketch and color. However I tried to give them a meaning of my own. In order of appearance in the gallery below:

Conceptual Art

In this painting I took the painted wooden frame of the 1646 Rembrandt's painting called The Holy Family and placed inside instead of the holy family, a definition like those Kosuth a famous conceptual artist used to exhibit. Only in this case the definition is for the conceptual art itself and it’s painted (not printed). Somehow this painting express my mixed feelings about conceptual art. You could say that most of the paintings here (including of course this one) were influenced by conceptual movement, but however I cannot hide that in some point I believe that many conceptual artists betrayed their former revolutionary attitude and created works that ended up inside galleries having lost completely this freshness and radical character of the first years. (1m x 70 cm)

Thoughts

Based on a painting called The Soothsayer's Recompense (1913), by Giorgio de Chirico. The large yellow surfaces of the ground are covered with newspapers referring to the war of Iraq while two airplanes are heading towards the tower of the railway station. The hours have changed into a binary code (0 and 1, black and white, good and bad) while the girl, a sleeping statue, is thinking but remains still. (65 x 50 cm)

Alogo

Based on a painting called Whistlejacket by George Stubbs. Apart from the more yellow background there is only one major change in this painting: the inscription "My kingdom for a horse" in greek, referring to the horse of the painting and playing with the meaning of the word "alogo" in greek (horse, but also without logic, sense). Somehow I think I had the whole art of painting in my head for this work. And I must admit that I enjoyed a lot creating / copying the horse. (50 x 60 cm)

Rape

This is a painting that was inspired by one of the numerous female figures of Pablo Picasso. There are only two significant changes here both small enough for me to question whether I should put the painting in the copies section. However, because they were deliberate and at least in my opinion they give another meaning (s) to the original work it was placed here. These changes are the bleeding breast and the bomb-like head. (47 x 60 cm)

Conceptual Painting

This is a work based on the work The Cross in the Mountains (1808) created by Gaspar Friedrich. It's more of an exercise than a complete work, and it has a quite satirical concept. It implies that the art of painting needs help immediately (the help of Batman, a comic, non-existent hero, an impossible situation). Back then as I was a student it felt more right than it does now. (50 x 52 cm)

Published in Paintings Sketches

Now in Bookstores

We Want Everything

the publications of colleagues, Nov. 2021

Summer of 1969, Italy. A year after May '68, FIAT workers began a dynamic and unmediated strike against their powerful boss. Their struggle marked the beginning of a decade of workers' and students' mobilizations and the rise of the Autonomy movement. It was characterized by many as the last invasion of the working class into the sky. Last ... let's hope until the next one ...

read more...

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